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That snippet was just the piece I needed to complete the song! I've put it together from a lot of other "fair use" sources and almost had the whole thing. But I missed the podcast! And I almost had the song FOR FREE! Damn UMG, damn them all to hell!

It is legal to listen to CDs off youtube. It isn't legal to put CDs on youtube. There are fair use exceptions, which playing a snippet in a news story is obviously one of. However, posting a full song online for others to download is illegal, and this is pretty settled law. It is less settled when the music is a minor part of another, transformative, use.

Don't forget that UMG (Universal Music Group) doesn't even have the copyright for this song in the first place. It was a commission promo piece that was done for, and paid for by Megaupload for their purposes. UMG was never even part of the deal, much less a copyright owner of it. It doesn't even use UMG samples in the music. So what UMG is doing, is claiming copyrights they do NOT have to block the promotional use of another company. This is ILLEGAL.As to a news report using a clip, that has been specifically listed as allowed and fair use in the laws, so is explicitly legal.

ianal (obviously)

And if anyone actually wants to see/hear the song, go to megaupload.com, they have it posted.

Posting a full song online is not illegal. Illegal specifically means against the law. They are trying to change and pervert the law all the time, so who really knows when even thinking about a song without authorization is actually against a law, but today posting a song is not illegal.

Copyright law structures the copyright and enumerates and defines the rights (legal entitlements). If you have violated copyright law, which meets the definition of illegal, it is because you have improperly constructed a copyright or some other equivalent.

Posting of the song is infringement of a copyright, not a law, which is very different in several important ways.

The prevalence of the terms illegal, theft, stealing, etc. in regards to copyright is merely a disingenuous attempt to characterize what is essentially a civil dispute over contractual violations in a legal agreement constructed through copyright law.

Since it requires too much work, and money, to take actual responsibility of your legal rights, there has been a movement to appropriate authority that was usually reserved for criminal acts and actual crime and abrogate any legal entitlements the consumer thought they (quite reasonably) had.

In addition to the propaganda campaign that includes the redefining and perversion of the words theft, steal, illegal, copyright, fair use, etc. Big Content has actively engaged in activities that are unlawful, unethical, and an effective bypass and nullification of the Judicial system. After all, participating in the Judicial system costs real money. Same exact principle behind deeds of trust for real estate, which is excusing yourself from any meaningful participation in the Judicial system and eliminating any chance of the other party seeking remediation through law.

While the emergence of digital technologies and communications, that were once the realm of Sci-Fi, has utterly destroyed the barrier to entry for copyright infringement, that does not justify the serious harm against society.

The mere fact that a large corporation can act as judge, jury, and executioner against 3rd parties with no legal or contractual basis of any kind, without consequence, and without regulation, is evidence that the system is broken.

So with respect, and I do not apologize for being pedantic, it is not illegal. It is infringing.

Any case of infringement, especially these ones, are within the jurisdiction of the courts and must involve due process.

Due process is the bane of Big Content. The reason should be obvious. If they had to actually explain and justify their actions... they would lose. They can't explain why if a customer paid them money they should not be able to enjoy the work in any form they want and back it up. They can't explain why using portions of the copyrighted work for educational and journalistic purposes should be barred, or how it even harms them.

They don't want to explain or justify anything. Just control it without opposition at any cost. Society be damned. After all, they need to afford those hookers, blow, and expensive toys some how.

Even if it were more possible, do you really think anyone would criminally prosecute a large company for just a false DMCA? Prosecutors gain nothing from that and just waste their resources for a minor offense against a company's major legal team. The end result would just end up being angering potential donors to political campaigns except when those donors encouraged prosecution of small copyright holders too poor to afford good lawyers.

Yes, but "we" allowed it by not making our representatives in Congress pass a law specifically forbidding it. "We the people" are ultimately responsible for our government, and anything our government does is "our" fault for voting them in.

It's like this in every country. The people of a country are always to blame for its government, no matter what kind of government they have. If the people don't like the government, it's their responsibility to change it, by any means necessary (including violent revolution--see Libya for a recent example of this). If the people don't, then it can be assumed the government operates with their permission. Of course, it's not quite so simple in some cases where a country has multiple ethnic groups that hate each other; Saddam's Iraq was an example of this. In those cases, you can't assume the oppressed minority approves of the government, but you can assume the majority that the government draws its power from does.

A bill doing just that has been introduced, but I doubt it will go anywhere until the current bunch of bums is thrown out. (I hate people who scream "throw out the bums!" and then re-elect their own Congressmen.)

For the same reason we allow labor unions, the EFF, and any other group to donate to political parties. Groups of people are still people with the same rights they always had even if they were not in a group. Exercising your freedom of association does not strip you of other rights.

Yes, and that's quite reasonable. There's really no sensible alternative to allowing corporations to make political donations; we have to, in order to apply rights consistently. I think the supreme court made the right call there.

Although I confess, I wouldn't personally be terribly heartbroken to see corporations restricted, if unions, non-profits, and all other collective organizations are restricted as well.

Sure there's a reasonable alternative. Nobody is allowed to donate. Campaign sizes are fixed, and provided for. Fixed and equal amounts of airtime/debate time for everyone who gets enough signatures. Equating monetary donations to speech is where the problem starts. I don't necessarily think that's wrong, but it opens too many floodgates that you can't really close in an equitable manner.

You still have freedom of association if you don't let companies make political donations. No company shareholder is banned from additionally joining or founding a political association and donating with their own money.

On the other hand, owning shares in a company does not mean you agree about politics with other shareholders, that would be a weird coincidence. Using your share of the company's profits in order to support a political party is therefore quite improper, as it's using your money against you

I would. It's clear that any group whose primary purpose is to advance the financial well-being of it's members is going to participate in the political process only where there is a perceived financial benefit to doing so. This perverts the political process. Ban it all.

Because, apparently, corporations are considered people in the US, at least for Freedom of Speech issues. They have other rights too, but apparently few responsibilities - except to their shareholders - and this is the problem. I mean, if they're people, why do they get special tax rules and rates, limited liability? Why are they allowed to pick their state of incorporation, regardless of where their headquarters or major operations ar

Let's be honest - the only reason corporations can't vote is because there's no benefit to them being able to. If that one extra vote meant they'd get their wishes, you'd better believe they'd be in front of the justices saying "corporations are people, and people can vote".

But if we're going to take the stance that corporations aren't people, and don't have the right to lobby/donate, then I can't find a valid argument for taxing them.

Counter-argument: corporations are simply implementations of contractual business obligations - it's still people underneath, whom all have the ability of free speech.

It seems to me that you could solve the problem pretty well in the following way: If a copyright holder negligently issues a take down for material that is likely to be fair use, the civil damages are no less than 5% of the total revenues collected with respect to that copyrighted work. If the copyright holder intentionally issues such a take down [like Diebold], the damages are no less than one million dollars.

That would pretty well sort it out, and with no help from any prosecutors office: The victims could collect directly in civil court. And copyright holders who find they are unable to tell whether something is fair use are free to request an injunction in court instead of using the take down process, so that a judge can make that determination in an adversarial proceeding prior to the copyright holder subjecting itself to any liability for issuing a fraudulent take down.

"If the claimed infringed work is owned by an incorporated entity, claimant shall post a bond equal to at least 1% of the annual income of that corporation for each claim, and if the claim is found to be false, claimant shall forfeit that bond to the person or entity being claimed against."...or something similar (and a lot more air-tight).

Not to quibble, since I fully agree, but since in this case Universal really does own the copyright (or that's what it looks like), your title would be the proper way to phrase it. Any unjustified copyright requests need to be punishable, whether the requestee owns the copyright or not. I would say especially if the use was covered by Fair Use, which this clearly was.

I would say loosing the copyright is a fair punishment, in this case. The use was clearly covered by exemptions, there is no way Universal co

It's disputed. The artists in the video are contracted to Universial. The dispute appears to be over a standard clause in recording contracts that transfers copyright for everything the artist produces to the label for the term of the contract. It's intended to prevent another label poaching artists after they become famous.

This clip was in no way owned by UMG. Megaupload solicited and paid the artist for the comercial, has releases from the artist to prove it. Megaupload holds the copyright to the video. UMG filed the takedown notice on the clip without holding the copyright, which was the story covered by TNT. TNT showed a video of the clip, without audio, and spoke over the clip. At the end, to show how bad the song was, they played less than 3 seconds of the end of the clip. UMG is being taken to court by Megaupload over the takedown notice for the original video. I was the original broadcast of TNT. UMG is censoring the news, and acting anti-competitively.

People are talking about policy. What the law should be. You're talking about what the law is, which is the whole problem.

Incidentally, fair use is a bit special because of the first amendment implications. Its sort of like self defense for murder: It's unconstitutional for them to punish you for it. What does that tell you about whether the law should allow "shoot first and ask questions later" on the part of the enforcers?

That's how it works in criminal court. Copyright Infringement is a civil matter, which is why people are getting sued for money rather than placed in jail. In Civil Cases you (usually) need something called "preponderance of the evidence", which is basically the same as just piling legal briefs onto each side of a sea saw until one side clearly tips.

The law may be interpreted that way by legal scholars, but it isn't enforced that way in practice, and most people do not have the resources to make a Fair Use defense in court. Much easier just to take down the offending work and hope it goes away.

In this case, they did ask that something they have the copyright to be taken down.

Actually, Universal only claims to have copyright to the first video. This seems unlikely since the video is a criticism of Universal. Now they have taken down a video that is a news report on their disputed claim to the first video. Use of short clips to illustrate a news report is such a classic case of fair use that no rights holder can claim to be unaware that the use is lawful. A takedown request is either grossly incompetent or malicious.

What Megaupload has done here is brilliant. They have baited Universal into conducting a dramatic live demonstration of the dangers of giving copyright holder unilateral takedown powers.

"Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposesThe nature of the copyrighted workThe amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a wholeThe effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work"

Sounds like this snippet met the third purpose. It also seems the rights holder would have a hard time demonstrating the fourth factor, though they would essentially shut YouTube down if they could demonstrate the first factor was a commercial nature, and claimed Google was the commercial beneficiary of that.

The 'amount and substantiality' factor leads you to think that a short clip could violate that, but could we argue in court that a short snippet would actually enhance the market or value by further popularizing the original work and driving even more audience and buyers that might otherwise not be exposed, and did not recieve a substantive portion of the work, therefore impelling them to purchase?

Or more simply put, having heard a short snippet, some of those YouTube viewers might actually buy the damned song that would not otherwise be aware of it at all?

You say that as if there is only one person who is responsible for this. I can think of a whole bunch of puppets in a building by the national mall doing exactly that. Even more so when you think of the defense appropriations bill that just went through the senate.

But who's counting at this point?

Even with that, the GP is right. As long as a SLAPP is enough to accomplish what you're trying to do (delay the message until it won't be relevant), that's all they really care about. I would imagine it would b

“Fully $100 million of the record-breaking $150 million that the Obama campaign collected in September alone came over the internet via credit card donations,” writes Bill Dyer at Hugh Hewitt’s blog. “The Obama campaign has deliberately turned off the anti-fraud mechanisms available for internet credit card transactions. They have no clue how many millions or tens of millions of dollars have been donated to them in v

Should be really allow copyright abuse in such a manner that it is illegal to even report on something regarding copyrighted material. If so, as a society we should just start teaching our kids to immediately give their lunch money to the biggest meanest kid in the school before they can even ask.

For Google? The public opinion. Google has tremendous power to lobby on their own. But if they loose public opinion, a company like Google that relies nearly 100% on the public using them on a daily basis could collapse overnight.

Which is odd, since Google's revenue in a single quarter is greater than the revenue of the entire music industry in a year (or approximately. Music is ~9-10 billion, Google is ~9 billion). Revenue != profit, I know, but still I should think Google would have tremendous influence in Washington. Plus, you know, the fact that they can reach most of the planet in a matter of hours with any message they so choose. I should think that would carry significant weight in Washington.

It obviously doesn't have the right. It's fair use for the purpose of reporting news.

This is simple collateral damage when you use software to automatically flag copyright violations and then act on that software's flagging automatically too cause humans are simply too expensive to police it all manually. Happens all the time. All the usual slashdot tropes of printers which do torrents, grandmas that get notices, openoffice that gets removed from ftp servers, etc.

Youtube and your mail client's spamfilter have the same problem: false positives. Both use an automated system to flag violations of policy and in both cases it mostly works but never 100%. You cannot demand from youtube or the RIAA to flag it all manually, just like you can't really flag all your spam manually: if you do, either Youtube goes out of business cause their business model does not allow that many employees and still serve you videos for "free". Or the major labels go out of business since they have to hire people to police youtube and demand even more per song. I'm sure many/.ers would like this 2nd outcome but it's not really realistic or actually desirable either.

So Tech News should alert youtube to unblock their video and move on. Oh I forgot: better to post it to slashdot frontpage so Tech News can get a few thousand more hits! Genius! The RIAA is evil after all.

This is ridiculous. That's like saying everyone arrested should just be considered guilty and sentenced because it's simply too expensive to have trials for everyone. Yes, our courts are jammed and yes, trials are a burden, but the alternative is simply unacceptable.

It isn't any different, but the stakes are so much lower that people tend to make dumb arguments without thinking things through.

BUT, in reality, it is simply to expensive to have trials for everyone.Depending on the jurisdiction, 85%~95% of all cases are settled before trial.Our legal system chokes on the small fraction of cases that do go before a judge.

/and it doesn't help that the President has been prevented from appointing judges to the bench.

Because in the case of arrest you are looking at the possibility severely affecting people's lives. In the case of Youtube you are simply talking about yanking a video from...uh Youtube. It shouldn't have to be explained. In the one case it is worth spending the man hours to ensure that it is done right. In the other, speak up if there is a problem to help improve the process; otherwise, move on.

Perhaps more to the point, one is arresting people. Since it is possible to have bots post things to youtube in an automated fashion, one needs to have bots to take things down.

Because in the case of arrest you are looking at the possibility severely affecting people's lives. In the case of Youtube you are simply talking about yanking a video from...uh Youtube.

If YouTube is so insignificant then why does it matter if copyrighted videos get posted to it? Either it's unimportant and so if copyrighted works get posted there it doesn't much matter and there is no call for extraordinary minimal-oversight methods to remove them, or it's very important and thereby requires the whole of due process. You can't have it both ways.

I hope you filter your incoming mail manually as well, just to be consistent.

Emphasis Mine. If it's "his" mail, and he doesn't mind false positives, that's his choice as it's his. You're comparing that to allowing a third-party to do it for you, automated, with false positives, without choice. Apples-to-Oranges my friend, apples-to-oranges.

I think much of the outrage is due to the presumption that the content was asserted to be infringing by the judgement of an actual person working for Universal. If Universal has an automated system producing false positives, I suspect it would be much more understandable to the average Slashdotter.

The other side of this is, If Tech News Today only published through their own web site, they wouldn't have the problem of automated content takedowns due to copyright assertions. If you publish on YouTube, you ha

If Universal has an automated system producing false positives, I suspect it would be much more understandable to the average Slashdotter.

What makes you think so? The copyright holder is the only party in any position to reduce false positives, which means the copyright holders ought to be the ones that bear the cost of doing so. Otherwise we get overrun with them. YouTube is blatantly the wrong party because they have no stake in it: They'll just do whatever it takes to reduce their legal liability regardless of what's correct, and if you box them in from both sides by requiring there to be no false positives or false negatives then they'll

Just to be clear we, at Tech news Today have posted a counter-notice and YouTube requires our show to stay off YouTube for 10 days to give UMG the opportunity to decide whether to take us to court or not. We also did not submit this story to Slashdot.

I agree 100%. Google just has to cover themselves so they don't get shut down completely. There's no way to police any of this, so they have an automated system. Nobody really screams that loud when a valid email gets sent to the spam filter. This is basically the same thing. If you don't like it, well, host your videos on your own web server. You don't have to worry about somebody else taking the video down without asking you. Youtube is great for teenagers posting videos of their latest skateboard

Now that big companies will just bludgeon people with lawsuits, is it possible to even defend oneself with the Fair Use doctrine? Note, I am talking about only those that are within Fair Use boundaries, which this case sounds like. I do movie reviews as a hobby, am I going to get hit with a suit for posting some screen captures now? Or quoting dialogue?

Forget the Corporate States of America, welcome to the Judicial State of America.

I am sure you can take it to court, and they will side with you. The problem is, it is so easy for them to claim DMCA against a site, have it taken down. You then have to go through costly litigation to prove you were right in the first place.

Now if the courts allow for you to turn around and charge for the number of people that would have seen your item if they hadn't used DMCA, now THAT would be interesting to see.

The problem is, it is so easy for them to claim DMCA against a site, have it taken down. You then have to go through costly litigation to prove you were right in the first place.

False. You file the counterclaim that is provided for in the DMCA, indicating that to the best of your knowledge you are not infringing copyright. The ISP must then put the content back up If the copyright holder still wants to pursue the matter, it is up to them to take it to court.

You file the counterclaim that is provided for in the DMCA, indicating that to the best of your knowledge you are not infringing copyright. The ISP must then put the content back up If the copyright holder still wants to pursue the matter, it is up to them to take it to court.

Nevertheless, at THAT moment the legal exposure and costs become quite real. What we need is a private consortium of fair use defenders to fund these counterclaims, or something like it, to even the scales of power.

... and which point you have to go through the costly litigation. The problem we keep running into is just one inherent in the legal system: It can easily get so time-consuming and expensive doing anything that smaller corporations and individuals just can't afford to play that game.

My original point still stands. Until there are some repercussions for RIAA and others to issue DMCA, it is still going to take time and money for VALID uses of Fair Use.

From what I understand, RIAA has never liked the Fair Use provisions, and have tried on numerous occasions to get those abolished. It seems if they can use DMCA take downs each time for valid Fair Use it could become a problem.

should a music company have the right to have a news podcast removed on copyright grounds, when it's not even clear that said company has had any copyrights violated?

Should they? No. But the DMCA gives them the right (or at least the ability) to do so. It gives it to you, too. My understanding is that anyone can file a DMCA takedown notice.

I have often wondered what would happen if people started filing DMCA takedown notices by the millions on major websites against the big content producers. There doesn't seem to be any penalty for filing bogus notices.

I have often wondered what would happen if people started filing DMCA takedown notices by the millions on major websites against the big content producers. There doesn't seem to be any penalty for filing bogus notices.

If individuals started doing this, I assure you there would be consequences for them. The feds, the MPAAs and RIAAs and their members, and even YouTube itself understands that this law can be abused, but that privilege is for the modern nobility, not the masses.

The copyright status of the clip used is irrelevant. The situation is this: Media conglomerates have been given editorial control of Youtube, subject only to the ability of posters to retain high-priced legal counsel. They can and do use these powers to further their own agenda.

Then the proper solution is to provide a way for video producers to self-host video and for viewers to discover video without the aid of YouTube services, so that no single entity has such a huge target painted on its behind.

The self-hosting part just got a lot easier with HTML5. I've recently had to switch my own videos from youtube to my own site, after it's content identifier decided that Gertie the Dinosaur (Produced in 1914, creator dead more than 70 years) is still under copyright.

Sure, a solution could be built around HTML5, but one still has to make a script to transcode to YouTube H.264 240p, H.264 360p, H.264 480p, H.264 720p, H.264 1080p, WebM 240p, WebM 360p, WebM 480p, WebM 720p, and WebM 1080p, and then choose one of those to serve to the viewer. Go with WebM only, and tablet users and IE 8 users won't be able to watch it; go with H.264 only, and users of Fx/Chrome/Opera won't be able to watch it. Go with a too high resolution, and viewers with slow connections won't be able

True. Almost. Actually, you don't have to worry too much about choosing the right codec - you still have to offer at least two video files, but video-tag capable browsers are capable enough to pick a format they support if you offer a list. That means all you need to worry about is resolution. I've been having trouble getting WebM to work quite right so far (It's still a young format), so my own videos are currently Theora/Ogg/Ogg. Firefox plays them fine. You can see the progress-so-far at http://birds-are [birds-are-nice.me]

You can appeal the decision with YouTube, apparently its quite common for them to flag public domain content. In one instance, YouTube flagged a user posted video containing the public domain music they used for their "YouTube 1911" April Fool's Joke!

Good luck getting a BitTorrent client installed on all users' machines, even on all those that can view YouTube. And good luck getting people to find your video that is distributed through BitTorrent. Have you an idea for a solution to these problems?

Leo Laporte makes fun of this happening, and it's happened before. He'll play a few seconds of some song while talking about something on TWiT, and joke on how that will get the show yanked from YouTube. It falls pretty clearly into the realm of fair use, I think YouTube has been knocked around so much by copyright lawsuits they just do whatever the big conglomerates say.

We live in a great world where a third party will pay for the storage and bandwidth to have other watch my lame videos. This is great because it costs me nothing to publish my videos. There is no risk and no expense beyond the production costs which can also be negligible.

Why is this possible? Because bandwidth is cheap, because storage is cheap, and because there is little risk of legal costs. The US Government has said that as long as a service take down any content that they have been notified violates a copyright, the service is not subject to any legal action. This is good for free services such as Youtube because it eliminates the risk and allows them to accept videos without any filtering.

If one wishes, one can set up one's own video sharing service, pay for the bandwidth, and the legal liability associated with potentially violating copyright. No one is going to stop the setup of such a service, and such a service can be free to ignore takedown notices. It is simply not in the best interest of Youtube, the preeminent distributor of lame and random video, to so do.

Of course many would say why not make the copyright holders for frivolous take down notices. I would support that. But even that would require companies like Google to invest in legal action that may not generate a profit, or at least might generate a greater loss than complying with takedown notices. Also, if policing video got too expensive, then copyright holder might put real money into lobbying congress and buy even worse legislation. This is, after all, the congress that has put more earmarks that funnel tax payer money to their families and buddies than almost any other. And this after a pledge not to so do.

Or are we redefining what makes journalism? From Wikipedia: "Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion."

To send the same information to a broad audience requires a broadcast. Thus completing the definition. From printing newspaper to uploading video to Youtube to updating your Facebook wall for the benefit of your 5,000 "friends".

Copyright infringement isn't "theft"; it isn't "stealing". Nothing of material - as opposed to speculative - value has been denied the titular "owner". It's not piracy.

What is it? The closest historical analog might be squatting. Squatters don't pirate the land they occupy; they don't steal it. They don't displace the owner. The land is exactly where it's always been. All a squatter does is use or appropriate the land in a manner unacceptable to its owner, possibly - but not always - interfering with

I'm all for fair use and indeed, I have often commented on the horribly broken copyright laws and the abuse of them by big media. Youtube is not publicly owned, though. It's Google's decision what they allow or don't allow. If they pulled the report because they only care about the quiet life, that's their choice (it's a bad choice in my view and it diminishes Google in my eyes, especially given their arguments over fair use and their book scanning project, but that doesn't automatically make it wrong). On

Same as always. Fair use is a perfectly valid defence, providing you are willing to spend a huge pile of money hireing lawyers and going to court over it. That's just how it usually works with the legal system: People have as many rights as they can afford to defend, and no more.

A boycott is an interesting proposal, but with a fatal flaw: It's an extreme minority issue. Right now there are probably more people campaigning for shops to say 'Merry Christmas' than there are willing to join any kind of music boycott.

How are we supposed to watch the video again, after Universial had it pulled? Your claim does have much plausibility - I too find it unlikely so many major artists would endorse Megaupload - but it can't be proven either way without looking at the video. Which, amusingly, is now only accessible by going to pirate websites to download it.